Google is trying to integrate Indian languages across Google Search & other properties

Google, the largest brand in the world, is trying to establish a stronger foothold on Indian soil and not that it doesn’t have already. Google is massive in India with millions of users using the various services on Google such as Google search engine, Google Go app, Google Maps, YouTube, to name a few. According to the Google for India event held this year, the company is taking measures to cater to more users.

As per estimates, the total language users count in India is expected to outrun 500 million marks in the next two years which is the number of users using Google services in other languages than English which is the default. Google is preparing a slew of products to cater to the increasing language users such as Google Assistant now works in English, Hindi, Marathi, and seven other Indian languages which will be shortly released.

The Google Search has greatly advertised that it can search and show results both in English and Hindi. It now provides complete dictionary definitions of works in Hindi and English language that will be supported by the lite version of Google Search app ‘Google Go’. Further, the Google Maps have garnered much acclaim due to the numerous features that it possesses. The voice-based guidance services on Google Maps is available both in Hindi and English languages.

When I tried the Google Assistant and asked if ‘It can speak Hindi?’, it prompted me to change the language and provided the settings for the same on the screen as well. Google is also curating the content based on Indian languages which account for only 1 percent of what’s available in the English language. According to its new project ‘Navlekha’ which means ‘a new way to write’ in Sanskrit, it will use Artificial intelligence tools to scan print publications and provide PDFs and digital versions of the same on the web.

Google Assistant can be used to read out web pages which is something almost everyone you use a smartphone knows about but as per Google, it will roll out a feature on its Google Go app that will read out content in Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, and Bengali apart from English languages and since it is a lightweight version, it will work flawlessly even on 2G.

Recently, Google rebranded its UPI payments app ‘Google Tez’ into ‘Google Pay’ umbrella and the changes have been officially reflected on the app as well. Google has also tied up with RedBus, Airtel to provide add-on services that will ease one’s life for sure. India is a home to more than 1.3 billion people and therefore, it is not a surprise that Google is actually interested in establishing a stronger foothold on the Indian soil and what’s a better way to provide content what Indians would consume the most.